Friday, August 3, 2012

Dayton Leroy Rogers

One That Got Away

As
Oregon lawmen drew a bead on this violent wacko, they found out that he
preferred prostitutes as his prey, had an appetite for kinky sex, and
liked to start things rolling with vodka and orange juice. During the
course of their investigation they also learned that he was Oregons
worst serial killer to date, a murderer whose blood lust knew no bounds.July
7, 1987, a Tuesday, was another hot, sultry summer day in Oregon.
Heather Brown, 31, a prostitute, had worked the night before in her area
along Portland's Union Avenue, a high-crime area dominated by
prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers. Several other hookers had been in
place that night, but despite the others, Heather, dressed in a
skintight outfit that left nothing to the imagination, never had to wait
long for a customer to come along. It had been a busy night for her,
and as a result she had slept in until nearly noon.When
she climbed out of bed, she reached for her pack of cigarettes but
found that it was empty. Needing a smoke, she left her two small
children with her roommate and began walking toward a nearby 7-Eleven
store, again dressed in the skintight outfit that she had worn the night
before. About halfway to the store, a man in a blue Nissan pickup
stopped and offered her a ride. Figuring that she could make a few quick
bucks, Heather accepted and climbed inside. The driver headed out of
the city toward a wooded area known as the Molalla forest.

The Molalla Forest (Clackamas County Sheriff's Dept.)

The john introduced
himself as Steve, and explained that he was a professional gambler from
Nevada. They drove along for some time, and at one point stopped at a
convenience store so that Heather could buy a pack of cigarettes and a
Coke and so that Steve could purchase a six-pack of beer. Afterward they
continued driving until they reached the wooded area, when their
conversation turned to business. He said that he was going to drive into
the hills, and that he wanted to tie someone up and fuck them. He moved
to touch her thigh, but she pushed his hand away and demanded that he
take her back to Portland. However, he refused and turned off onto an
unpaved logging road where he sped up to about forty miles per hour.Heather
grabbed her shoes off of the floor, ready to make a break for it when
the time was right. But the john caught her eyeing the door handle, and
he reacted instantly. He swerved the pickup recklessly, so she would
lose her sense of balance, and reached toward her, placing his hand over
her chest to prevent her from jumping out of the truck. He then stepped
on the accelerator and was soon speeding to more than sixty miles per
hour. Nearly out of her mind with fear, Heather struggled violently and
managed to break free of the mans hold. In one swift move she opened the
door and jumped from the speeding truck. The john slowed his vehicle a
little but, apparently aware that a log truck was close behind, kept on
going.When the logger rounded the curve, he saw
Heather lying in the road and slammed on his brakes. Seeing that she was
injured and grateful that he hadnt hit her, he helped her into the cab
of his rig. One of her eyes was bleeding, which he helped her to cover,
and she had other scrapes and cuts. She told the logger that she had to
jump out of the mans pickup because she feared that he was planning to
kill her. Since she was obviously very shaken up, the logger didnt probe
her with questions. Instead, he arranged to have her driven to a
medical clinic in Molalla, where it was determined that she had suffered
a concussion and multiple abrasions to her left temple area, right
forearm, and hand.

Detective John Turner (King)

The matter was reported to the Clackamas County Sheriffs
Department and was written up as case number 87-20998. The incident
report would become the first clue of the horror that was already well
underway to veteran Detective John Turner, 44, a distinguished-looking
man of Anglo-Saxon descent.Turner had no way of
knowing it yet, but the evil outrage that was taking its toll on
Portlands streetwalkers would virtually consume his life for much of the
next two years and would eventually lead him to the most vicious and
remorseless killer with whom he had ever dealt or would likely ever face
again.

Stepping Out

It
has been said that blood lust is an aberration unique to the human
animal, that whenit occurs, it does so without purpose and has no
reverence for the normal needs intrinsic to humankind survival. The
aberrationfor that is what it really isis clearly sexual violence and
all evil, and it rears its diabolic head when its host fails to achieve
sexual gratification in any other way. As a result, manyparticularly
women and childrenwho unwittingly come into contact with such an
individual, die needlessly and without mercy at his hands.

Dayton Leroy Rogers (Canby Herald)

Dayton Leroy Rogers, 33-years-old when his blood lust
neared its peak, was fearsomely known to many of Portland, Oregons
prostitutes as "Steve the gambler" and has been afflicted by bloodlust
since his late teens, perhaps longer. It usually materialized in the
form of a headache, inflicting on him a splitting, blinding white pain,
and perhaps he was always subconsciously aware that only the sight of
another's pain, the sounds of her anguish, or, ultimately, the spilling
of her blood would relieve his own suffering. When the headaches began,
the only way to make them go away was to let his dark side fully emerge.

Daytonseemed
personable enough on the surface, as long as he wasn't in the midst of
one of his mood swings. He was well known in the small communities of
Woodburn and Canby, and people seemed to like him. A mechanic by trade, a
skill he had learned in prison, Dayton ran a small successful engine
repair business, was married, and had an eighteen-month-old boy who was a
mirror image of him. Few people saw the evil that lay beneath the thin
veneer, and many of those who were unlucky enough to witness his dark
side firsthand did not live to talk about it.Dayton's
headaches seemed to worsen during the summer of 1987 and for that
reason he was away from home much of the time. He claimed that he was
working at his shop during his absences, which ranged from a few hours
to all night, and his wife, Sherry, saw little reason, at first, to
doubt him. When she would call to check up on him in the early evening,
he usually answered the telephone. On the occasions that he didn't, he
always had an excuse. He would explain that he had been in the middle of
a project and hadn't wanted to leave it to pick up the phone. Or, more
commonly, he would tell Sherry that he had gone out to get coffee,
perhaps a bite to eat, anything that would convince her he was only
taking a break to get away from the shop for a while. Often, however, he
waited until it was very late, until he was certain that Sherry was in
bed and fast asleep, before beginning the prowl. Soon his working late
became routine, a way of life, and Sherry's phone calls became less
frequent. Although she began to hear stories about him frequenting the
local taverns and bars, she tried very hard to maintain the faith she
had always had in him. She might have become suspicious of his
activities sooner if only she had taken the trouble to check the mileage
on his pickup. But she hadn't, and he put more miles on the truck in a
single week than most people drive in a month.August
6, a Thursday, started out for the Rogers family like most other days.
Dayton got up early, showered and shaved, had a light breakfast, and
drove to his small engine repair shop in Woodburn before 8 a.m.
Outwardly, he seemed happy. Business had picked up during the summer to
the point where he had to hire a man to help him, and several new repair
orders were coming in every day. Soon, however, he began to feel the
pressures of the backlog despite the new help, and his headaches became
more frequent, as did his nocturnal outings. At times Sherry found
herself wondering what had come over him, seeing him sitting quietly and
staring into space, but she never said anything. Even though she had
heard rumors about him carousing the nightspots and secretly feared that
he may have been seeing other women, she somehow convinced herself that
the pressures from his business had become too great, and she didn't
want to do or say anything that might add to his troubles.It
wasn't until later that afternoon that the pounding inside Dayton's
head became more than he could bear. He had to do something to stop the
headache. He left his assistant in charge of the shop and drove to the
liquor store at the North Park Plaza in Woodburn, where he purchased a
ten-pack of Smirnoff vodka miniatures to replace the depleted stock he
normally kept behind the seat of his pickup. He also purchased a couple
of bottles of orange juice, the type in the disposable plastic bottles
that he liked so well. He drank one of his crudely mixed screwdrivers
quickly, and the headache subsided a little. Afterward, he returned to
his shop and waited, thinking and planning the rest of the evening. He
needed something more effective than the alcohol for his headache. The
remedies were there, he knew, out in numbers on Portland's streets, his
for the asking and a $50 bill. It had all been so easy with all of the
others that there was no stopping him now.At 8:30
p.m. Dayton drove home, where he had dinner with Sherry and his son. He
explained that he had to return to the shop and work very late, perhaps
into the early morning hours, to catch up on some of the overdue work.
Sherry, an attractive curly-haired silver brunette at five feet four
inches tall, 120 pounds, and three years younger than Dayton, didn't
protest. She never did. Devoutly religious and somewhat naive, she
always trusted her husband and rarely questioned his activities.Half
an hour later Dayton was gone. He stopped off at his shop, had a couple
more drinks, and tinkered with some of the easier repair projects to
kill time. Shortly after midnight he changed into his stepping-out
clothes that he kept inside his special closet, and waited inside the
shop a little longer until he was certain that Sherry had gone to bed.
By 12:30 a.m. he was heading toward Portland.

One That Didn't Get Away

On August 7, 1987, by1:00 a.m., the man who called himself
Steve the gambler was back on Union Avenue, which was known as Portlands
Prostitute Row, looking for some kinky action.After
a short cruise, he stopped a blonde near the corner of Northeast Union
Avenue and Wygant Street. He recognized her as a hooker he'd picked up
before during Portland's 1987 Rose Festival. She was a somewhat large
woman but, from a distance, appeared attractive. She knew how to dress
and held her weight well. He pulled over and invited her inside.
Recognizing him as a former customer, the woman didn't hesitate.No
one, except for the john, knows the precise details of what happened
between the couple from 1-3:00 a.m. But at some time prior to 3:00 a.m.,
they pulled into the parking lot of a Dennys restaurant on the 16200
block of Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard in Oak Grove, a Clackamas County
suburb of Portland. With the taverns and bars having just closed,
business was brisk there; it was the only restaurant open in the area at
that time of the morning.Michael Fielding, 32, who
lived in an apartment nearby, had gone to bed a couple of hours earlier
and was sleeping soundly when he suddenly heard the muffled screams of a
woman in intense pain."Help me!" screamed the
woman. "Please help me! Rape! I'm being raped!" As Fielding climbed out
of bed and headed for the window that overlooked the parking lot, the
screams became louder, no longer muffled. He arrived at the window in
time to see a man run beneath a streetlight.Moments
earlier, James Dahlke, 50, had just arrived at Dennys. He was alone as
he parked his 1983 Ford van and started walking toward the restaurant.
He heard a woman yelling and screaming, but couldnt quite make out what
she was saying. But he could see two human forms in the parking lot in
the direction from which the screams had come. Although it was dark, he
could see two people, a man and a woman, who appeared to be struggling
with each other. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the parking
lot, Dahlke could not believe what he saw. There, near the middle of the
parking lot, lay a completely naked woman! A man was kneeling over her,
but Dahlke could not immediately determine why.Charles
Gates, a handicapped customer, had just arrived and had barely situated
himself in his wheelchair when he heard the screams. Already outside in
the parking lot, he was on his way over to the woman, as was Dahlke.
When the man kneeling over the woman saw Dahlke and Gates approaching,
he jumped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction. Gates reached
the woman first."My God! He slit her throat!"
exclaimed Gates, falling from his wheelchair. Experienced in first aid
and emergency medical treatment, Gates noted that the woman was not
breathing and would not respond to questions. Finding no carotid pulse
and undaunted by all of the blood, he immediately began CPR and
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.As a crowd gathered,
Dahlke instructed restaurant personnel to call for medical and police
help. Then he returned to the parking lot only to discover that Gatess
gallant attempts had not revived the woman. Dahlke could see why. The
woman was covered with blood and stab wounds.A
couple of minutes later, Dahlke again spotted the man he'd seen only
moments before kneeling by the nude victim. The man was coming around
the side of a building adjacent to the restaurant and was headed for a
small foreign pickup parked nearby.Thats him! Someone shouted. Thats the son-of-a-motherfucker!By
that time two other bystanders, Stan Conner and Richard Bergio, had
rushed over to see what was happening. After learning of the incident,
Conner and Bergio ran for their own vehicles. They attempted to block
off the exits from the parking lot with their cars, but the man with the
pickup drove out over the sidewalk.Bergio,
determined not to let the guy get away, sped out of the parking lot in
his own car in hot pursuit of the pickup, which was by now heading south
on McLoughlin Boulevard toward Gladstone. Bergio chased the pickup
through Oak Grove and into nearby Gladstone, at times at speeds over 100
miles an hour. Then, Bergio got close enough to the pickup to copy down
its license plate number. Satisfied that he'd done all that he could,
Bergio gave up the chase and returned to the crime scene, where he now
found a team of Clackamas County sheriff's deputies and a rescue team
from the Oak Lodge Fire Department.The rescuers
valiantly tried to revive the woman, but to no avail. A short time
later, she was loaded onto an ambulance and taken to Emanuel Hospital
and Health Center in Portland, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.Meanwhile, several deputies rounded up witnesses and took a statement from each.Six
of those interviewed said they'd heard the woman's screams for at least
two minutes before her body was found. One of the witnesses, Michael
Fielding, told the deputies how the woman's screams had awakened him.It
had sounded as though her screams had come from inside a closed
vehicle, through the glass, at first, said Fielding, because her shrieks
were muffled. She was obviously in intense pain and had cried out that
she was being raped. When Fielding got to the window, though, all he saw
was the man who ran beneath the streetlight."It was
like a spotlight," said Fielding. "If he hadn't run underneath it, I
wouldn't have seen anything." He told the deputies that he had gotten a
good look at the man, and that he could likely recognize him if he saw
him again.Deputies found several articles of
clothing not far from where the victim's body had lain. The clothing,
believed to be hers, included blue jeans, a hooded blue sweatshirt with
white trim, and a single tennis shoe. But, the deputies wondered, where
was the other shoe?No identification, either in the
clothing or on the parking lot, was found. But after additional
searching, the deputies found a double-length pair of shoelaces, tied
together with loops at both ends, prompting some to speculate that the
woman had been hogtied at one point.

Dayton

Det. Mike Machado (King)

A short time later, Clackamas County Sheriff's
Detectives John T. Turner and Mike Machado arrived at the crime scene.
After being briefed on that morning's events, Turner took the license
plate number (Oregon CYW 194) provided by Richard Bergio and ran it
through the Oregon State Department of Motor Vehicles computer. Moments
later, Turner learned that the pickup's registered owner was 33-year-old
Dayton Leroy Rogers, whose address was listed as being in the 10500
block of South Heinz Road in Canby, Oregon, about 20 miles south of the
crime scene.

Turner and
a team of deputies reached Rogers' home at approximately 5:00 a.m. They
saw no sign of the pickup on the property, and they were subsequently
told by a relative that Rogers was not at home but could likely be found
at his auto-repair shop in the 11600 block of Pacific Court in
Woodburn, a few miles south of Canby. The relative told the sleuths that
Rogers sometimes worked odd hours at the shop.It
was 5:35 a.m. when Detective Turner arrived at Rogers' shop. After a
cursory glance around outside, he knocked on the door of the shop until a
man with bloodshot eyes answered. Smelling of alcohol, the man
identified himself as Dayton Rogers. After Turner told Rogers that he
and the deputies were there as part of a homicide investigation, Rogers
allowed them inside.Although Detective Turner noted
that Rogers' pupils were dilated, he observed that the man had no
difficulty walking and that his speech was not slurred, prompting him to
conclude that Rogers had been drinking but was not drunk. When asked,
Rogers told the detective that he'd been at the shop all night and had
been drinking bourbon and strawberry mixer."Mind if I take a look around?" asked Turner."Go ahead and search the place," said Rogers. "Search the truck, too, if you want to."Rogerstold
the detective that his pickup had been at the shop all night. Turner
shot him a dubious glance, walked over to the truck and raised the hood."Been
here all night, huh?" asked Turner as he attempted to place his hand on
the engine's valve cover, which was too hot to touch. "You haven't gone
out at all, have you?"Rogers, or somebody, had recently run the engine hard, thought Turner, as he pulled his hand away from the hot engine."What happened to your hand?" asked Turner, observing that Rogers' right hand was bandaged. "Cut yourself?"Rogersexplained
that he'd been using a hacksaw a few hours earlier, when it suddenly
slipped and cut his hand. Turner asked if he had left the shop for first
aid; Rogers responded that he'd gone to Willamette Falls Hospital in
Oregon City that same morning to have the wound treated.So
he had left the shop, reflected Turner, who also wondered why the man
had initially lied about it. If he didn't have anything to hide, why was
he acting so suspiciously?There was no doubt that
Rogers' pickup was the one seen fleeing the scene of the crime. It
matched in appearance and the license plate identification was the same.
Because of that and his suspicious demeanor, Rogers was arrested a few
minutes later and taken to the Clackamas County Jail in Oregon City,
where he was held on suspicion of murder.

Mugshot of Jennifer Lisa Smith

Meanwhile, the detectives identified the dead woman as
25-year-old Jennifer Lisa Smith, mother of two. Her last known address
was in the 4800 block of North Albina Avenue in Portland, not far from
Union Avenue. Additional background on Smith revealed that she had an
arrest record for prostitution and indecent exposure.

Background
on Rogers revealed that he was no stranger to law enforcement, either.
In 1972, when he was 18, Rogers picked up a 15-year-old girl who had
been hitchhiking in Eugene, Oregon. He had convinced her to go to a
remote area to have sex with him, detectives learned. Risking a charge
of statutory rape, Rogers picked the girl up again a few days later and
they went together to a park to gather wood to make whistles for
neighborhood kids. But he took her into a wooded area to again have sex
with her.After lying down on the ground, Rogers
leaned over as if to kiss the girl. Instead, according to police
reports, he stabbed her in the abdomen with a hunting knife. After
pulling the knife from her stomach, the girl, bleeding profusely and in
intense pain, convinced Rogers to take her to a hospital for treatment.
She survived and later told authorities about the attack. On February
13, 1973, Rogers pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and was placed
on four years' probation for that attack.Less than
six months later, the detectives learned, Rogers assaulted two
15-year-old girls with a soft-drink bottle. Although charged with one
count each of second- and third-degree assault, Rogers was found not
guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, Oregon's equivalent to an
insanity plea; he was sent to the Oregon State Hospital by Lane County
Circuit Court Judge Helen Frye. He was released from the hospital on
December 12, 1974.These incidents prompted Darryl L.
Larson, Lane County Deputy District Attorney, to write an
after-sentence report on Rogers: "This man is an extreme danger to the
community, particularly to young women. He is both sexually and
physically violent and, without question, is a murder case looking for a
place to happen.In January 1976, Rogers was
indicted on a charge of first-degree rape in Clackamas County, but he
was eventually acquitted of the charge. In February 1976, however, while
the Clackamas County rape charge was still pending, Rogers picked up
two Keizer, Oregon high school girls, and at knifepoint allegedly raped
one and threatened to rape the other.According to
John L. Collins, Yamhill County District Attorney, the two girls had
skipped school and were walking down a Keizer street when Rogers saw
them and convinced them to go with him."He was a
good talker and his method at the time was to pick up girls,
particularly blonde girls," said Collins. "They got into the car with
him, and they went to get some beer." After drinking beer and smoking
marijuana together, said Collins, Rogers took a paring knife from the
glove box of the car he was driving and threatened the girls with it. He
used coat-hanger wire to bind the girls' wrists and ankles."Afterward
he apologized and pretended like it was all some kind of game," said
Collins. Rogers was nonetheless indicted on charges of rape and
coercion; he pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
Rogers was convicted only on the coercion charge and received a maximum
five-year prison sentence."This was in a
less-enlightened time," said Collins, "when juries often felt that if
the woman or girl contributed to the rape in any way, they would not
convict him. In this case, I think it was because they drank beer and
smoked marijuana with him."As the detectives probed
deeper into Rogers' background, they learned that he had been in and out
of jail for a variety of reasons, including parole and probation
violations and for kidnapping a local prostitute. All in all, the
detectives learned, Rogers spent 27 months in Oregon prisons. His parole
was formally terminated in January 1983.

Evidence

Meanwhile,
acting on a tip from one of Rogers' relatives, investigators returned
to the suspect's Woodburn auto-repair shop, where they sifted ashes from
a wood stove in Rogers' office. There they found what appeared to be
remnants of a burned tennis shoe. Analysis later determined that metal
parts found in the wood stove closely matched the metal parts of the
shoe that was discovered in the parking lot where Jennifer Smith was
murdered. They also found pieces of colored glass, rhinestones, and
star-shaped grommets inside the stove, their sources unknown.Rogers'
truck had been impounded shortly after his arrest, after warrants had
been obtained, and it was carefully searched for evidence. According to
criminalists, there was blood inside the cab of the pickup, numerous
knife cuts on the dashboard, upholstery, ceiling, and passenger door.
They also found a single fingerprint matching that of Jennifer Smith's
right ring finger on the outside handle of the passenger door. The
examination and search also turned up a small green band in the bed of
the pickup; they later determined it had come from a small container of
ready-to-drink orange juice.

Wounds to Rogers' hands

Next, in their efforts to build a stronger case against
Rogers, the detectives went to Willamette Falls Hospital in Oregon City
to see how much of the suspect's story about his wounded hand was true.
After questioning the emergency room doctor who had attended to the
wounds, the detectives learned that the cuts were not jagged as they
would have been if a hacksaw blade had made them. They had been smooth
and clean, more like wounds that would have been caused by a knife
blade.

Although gut
feelings told the investigators that Rogers was their man, they
nonetheless assembled a photo lay-down, a group of six photographs of
men, including Rogers, who had similar appearances. They displayed the
lay-down to eyewitness Michael Fielding; it took him less than 20
seconds to identify Dayton Rogers as the man he saw stop briefly under a
streetlight as he fled the Dennys restaurant parking lot.Because
Jennifer Smith was a known prostitute and because of Rogers' continued
interest in hookers, detectives hit Portlands streets and interviewed as
many hookers as they could, focusing their attention on those who knew
Jennifer. Not surprisingly, the detectives found several who knew
Rogers, too.Many of the hookers that the detectives
talked to identified Rogers from a photo lay-down; several said he'd
told them his name was Steve. One of the women even told investigators
that she saw Jennifer Smith walk toward his pickup, as if to get inside,
three hours before she was found murdered.The
detectives learned that he nearly always told the girls he was a
professional gambler, usually saying that he was from Las Vegas but
sometimes saying that he was from Reno, and that he typically offered
$40 to $80 for a sexual scenario that involved bondage. He always had
the girls completely undress, after which he bound their hands and feet
at the wrists and ankles with rope, dog collars, wire, nylon stockings,
shoe laces, and the likeanything that would hold their arms and feet
securely in place. But many said that Rogers went far beyond bondage,
subjecting them to intense physical pain, torture, even mutilation.One
prostitute told the detectives that Rogers had a foot fetish and found
women's arches sexually arousing. An interesting point, the detectives
noted, considering that Jennifer Smith was barefoot when her body was
found. 0ther prostitutes said that all of the "dates" occurred in the
cab of Rogers' pickup, and Rogers usually began by drinking vodka and
orange juice. He usually stopped at a convenience store, said the
hookers, where he bought ready-to-drink juice in small plastic
containers.One of the prostitutes accompanied a
detective to a convenience store and picked out the brand of orange
juice Rogers usually bought, in small plastic containers with green
plastic caps security-sealed with green bands, just like the one found
in the bed of Rogers' pickup. He usually bought the vodka in the
individual serving, one-and-a-half-ounce bottles, like those served by
airlines.One hooker told the detectives that Rogers
picked her up and agreed to pay her $50 for straight sex. Instead, he
tied her hands and feet and tortured her for hours by biting her on the
breasts, buttocks, and feet, hard enough to draw blood. Another
prostitute said she was subjected to the same type of treatment, except
that he threatened to cut off her breasts with a knife. Yet another
hooker told the detectives that Rogers cut off her clothes with a
machete, and another said he cut the heel of her foot with a carving
knife. One of the women said that he had subjected her to so much pain
during a six-hour ordeal that she'd asked him to kill her. All of the
women said that Rogers liked to masturbate during the encounters.From
the definitive autopsy of Jennifer Smith's body, Dr. Karen Gunson,
Deputy State Medical Examiner, determined that there were at least 11
knife wounds to the victim's body, 10 of which were very deep. The
medical examiner said that there were eight stab wounds to the front of
Jennifer's body, one of which severed a major artery on the left side of
her chest and was likely the cause of death.Jennifer
also sustained slashing wounds to both of her breasts, two deep stab
wounds to her abdomen that pierced her stomach, and a V-shaped stab
wound in her back that pierced her liver. Dr. Gunson explained that the
V-shaped wound might have been caused by two stabs that had overlapped.

Jennifer Smith's wounded hands

The victim also had slash wounds to both of her hands
that cut all the way to the bone, wounds which Dr. Gunson described as
defensive injuries caused when the victim tried to grab the knife blade
from her attacker or otherwise tried to prevent him from stabbing her.
Jennifer's throat had also been slit.

"There
were other wounds," said Dr. Gunson, including two quarter-inch-wide
bruises around both wrists. These bruises indicated that Jennifer had
been tied up, perhaps with the shoelaces found at the crime scene.
Gunson said that "a significant amount of pressure" must have been
applied to Jennifer's wrists for such bruising to occur.After
the investigators presented their case to a Clackamas County grand
jury, Dayton Leroy Rogers was indicted on a charge of aggravated murder
in the death of Jennifer Smith. The indictment alleged that Rogers
murdered Smith during the course of rape, kidnapping, sexual abuse, and
torture. It also alleged that Rogers killed Smith to cover up the other
crimes.Rogersretained Attorney Arthur
B. Knauss of Oregon City to represent him, and he pleaded innocent to
the charges. He was held without bail.

The Molalla Forest

In
the meantime, on Monday, August 31st, Everett Banyard, 46, a crossbow
hunter in pursuit of prey on a private 90,000-acre timber farm southeast
of Molalla, Oregon, nearly stumbled over the nude, partlyburied body of
a young woman. The body, in an advanced state of decomposition, was
partially covered with brush. Unnerved by his gruesome discovery, the
hunter left the forest as quickly as possible and reported his find to
the Clackamas County authorities.When investigators
arrived at the remote sitea recreation area near the Molalla River that
is popular with fishermen, swimmers, hunters, hikers, and other outdoors
typesthe bow hunter led them up an old dirt logging road through the
rugged mountain forest, mixed with evergreens and deciduous trees, to a
nearly vertical slope where he'd discovered the body. Even though it was
a little difficult to get to, the investigators had no trouble finding
the corpse.

John Turner, back to camera, with Sheriff Brill Brooks (Clackamas Sheriff's Dept.)

At first glance, the detectives couldn't tell if the
body had been buried by the forces of nature or if someone had attempted
to conceal it. But one thing was certainshe was a murder victim.Due
to the lateness of the hour, no attempt was made to search the crime
scene that evening. Instead, deputies were posted nearby as sentries to
protect the scene until criminalists arrived the next morning.

Shortly
after a search for evidence began the next day, searchers found two
more corpses within 50 feet of each other, in the same general area as
the first. The scene appeared to be a "cluster dump" similar to those
used by the Green River serial killer in Washington State. Unsure of
what they were dealing with here, the investigators temporarily halted
the search while Colt, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department's
tracking dog, was brought in to assist in the search for more bodies.

Investigators searching the forest area (Clackamas Sheriff's Dept)

Over the next five days, a
total of seven female corpses were brought down from the forest ridge.
All were nude when found, and all bore signs of stabbing, torture, and
mutilation. Some of the victims feet had been crudely removed at the
ankle with what appeared to be a blade with a serrated edge, like that
of a hacksaw. One victims foot had been cut approximately two-thirds of
the way through the bone, with the remainder broken off. This prompted
the detectives to consider that the perpetrator had sawed these womens
feet off while they were still alive and conscious in an attempt to
elicit additional pain and sufferinghowever, the one victim whose bone
had only been partially sawed through and then broken the rest of the
way likely had gone into shock, and the breaking of the bone had likely
been a last-ditch attempt at breaking through the shock barrier to
elicit one final response to pain. Each of the victims were in varying
degrees of decomposition, but two were markedly more advanced, having
been there considerably longer than the others.

Despite the striking
similarities between the female victims on the Molalla forest slope and
Jennifer Smithnudity, signs of stabbing, torture, mutilationthe
detectives didnt, at least at first, focus on Dayton Leroy Rogers as a
possible suspect. He was in jail, charged with a different murder.
However, as Detective Turner walked around the forest site he soon
spotted miniature vodka bottles, an old package that they had been
purchased in, and disposable orange juice bottlesthe same kind found in
the back of Dayton Rogers pickup. As a result, it didn't take long for
Turner to begin focusing on Dayton Rogers as the prime suspect in the
Molalla forest murders. He also reasoned that, when all was said and
done, many if not most of the Molalla forest victims would turn out to
have a history of prostitution arrests.The dead, it
turned out, were identified over the next several months as Lisa Marie
Mock, 23; Maureen Ann Hodges, 26; Christine Lotus Adams, 35; Nondace Kae
Cervantes, 26, a.k.a. Noni Kae Austin; Reatha Gyles,16; Cynthia Diane
DeVore, 21. One victim remains unidentified to this day. And just as
Turner had figured, most of the victims had either worked as prostitutes
at the time of their deaths, or they had arrest records for prior
prostitution offenses. Some were heroin addicts. Only one had no links
to prostitution or drugs.

Top Row: Lisa Mock, Maureen Hodges, Christine Adams

Bottom Row: Christine Adams, Nondace Cervantes, Reatha Gyles

At the time of the
gruesome discovery in the Molalla forest, the investigators wouldn't say
what they had for evidence against Rogers. However, one source close to
the investigation maintained that he was the prime suspect in the
forest murders and that they had enough evidence to bring him to trial
in those killings, but they wanted to wait and see how his trial for the
murder of Jennifer Smith turned out before charging him with the
Molalla forest murders.

The First Trial

At Rogers' trial, which began in February 1988
in the courtroom of Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Patrick D.
Gilroy, Deputy District Attorney Andrejs I. Eglitis told the jury that
Rogers murdered Jennifer Smith by design, following a pattern he'd
established with prostitutes. Eglitis called Rogers a "vicious predator"
who killed for a "sexual thrill.''"You'll find that
the reason he went to downtown Portland was...to satisfy what you will
find to be his bizarre sexual appetite," said Deputy D.A. Eglitis."You'll find that his sexual appetite included bondage, masturbation, and intent to inflict intense physical pain."Rogers'
attorney, Arthur Knauss, told jurors that they would not like his
client, but insisted they were there to decide whether what Mr. Rogers
did was tantamount to a criminal act and not to judge his sexual mores.
Knauss admitted that Rogers killed Jennifer Smith, but contended that he
did so in self-defense.There it was, the
preposterous claim of self-defense. Eglitis had known that it was
coming, and he had prepared himself to accept that such a defense would
be presented. He couldnt believe it, but he accepted it. He knew he
would convince the jury otherwise. The evidence would show them the
truth.Knauss maintained that Smith spotted more than
$200 in Rogers' wallet when they stopped at a convenience store to buy
orange juice and she decided to rob the defendant at knifepoint. Later,
when Rogers got out of the truck to urinate, Smith pulled a knife from
the glove compartment and brought it close to Rogers' throat and
demanded his wallet, declared Knauss. A struggle followed and turned
into a wrestling match for the knife, in which Jennifer Smith was
stabbed several times and killed purely by accident.Early
in the trial, the jury heard testimony from several witnesses who said
they heard the victim scream in intense pain for approximately two
minutes before her body was discovered. Prosecutor Eglitis also said
that there were deep cuts to Jennifer's breasts, which indicated that
she'd been tortured; and he presented testimony from the medical
examiner who displayed graphic photos of Jennifer's wounds.At
one point in the trial, jurors heard testimony from the woman Rogers
had stabbed in 1972, when he was 18 and she was 15. She explained how
she had met Rogers when he picked her up while she hitchhiked in Eugene,
and how he took her into a remote area to have sex on that day and on a
subsequent date."We'd hold hands and swing around
and talk and smile," said the prior victim, who came close to tears at
several points. "Then we sat down, and we were talking and he tickled my
legs and told me to close my eyes...Then I felt the plunge."She
explained that Rogers had stabbed her in the belly, just left of her
navel. She stopped momentarily and showed jurors a six-inch vertical
scar."I thought a rattlesnake had bit meif it wasn't
that, I thought a horse had kicked me," said the woman. "I looked down
and saw the knife in my abdomen and the blood coming out." The woman
testified that Rogers told her he just couldn't trust her any more and
was afraid that she might turn him in for having sex with her while she
was underage. Fearing that he would finish her off, she lied to him and
told him she loved him."I said, 'Dayton, I love
you.' He began to tell me he would marry me and do anything," she said,
if she promised to tell the police she stabbed herself accidentally. She
agreed to his plan.But doctors at Eugene's Sacred
Heart Hospital told her they didn't believe the wound was
self-inflicted. "I was afraid he would come there and kill me," she
said. Then, she added, she changed her mind and told police the truth.Another
witness told the jury about an incident that occurred between her and
Rogers on February 20, 1976. According to the witness, who was 19 at the
time of the incident, Rogers picked her up as she walked toward Salem
to visit her boyfriend, who was incarcerated at the Oregon State
Correctional Institution.The woman was in the back
seat of Rogers' car when he suddenly pulled over and took a knife from
the glove compartment. She said he "hogtied" her and then cut off her
clothing with the knife."I was scared he was, you
know, he was going to kill me," said the woman. "He said he had to kill
me because he was afraid I'd go to the police." She testified that
Rogers eventually let her out of the car near her grandmother's home in
Oregon City.Janet K. Anderson, a Clackamas County
corrections officer who supervised Rogers while he was on parole for the
1976 coercion conviction in which he tied up two other high school
girls at knifepoint, testified that she interviewed the defendant in
September 1982."I asked him if he were to do this
all over again, if he would do anything differently," Anderson
testified. "He indicated...there would not be a witness next time."When
cross-examined by Defense Attorney Knauss, Anderson told the jurors
that she took Rogers' statements seriously, but hadn't included them in
her report."Mr. Rogers' intentions appear sincere to
maintain counsel and to remain crime-free," Anderson wrote in a letter
to the State Board of Parole, part of which was read to the jury. "Mr.
Rogers does not appear to be a threat to the community." The parole
officer added that the language used in the letter and her report was
typical of language used when terminating parole supervision. She said
her personal notes on Rogers, however, "indicated that the suspect
appears well-adjusted, but because of the crime and the surrounding
circumstances, one never knows."At another point in
the trial, Rogers testified in his own defense before the seven-man,
five-woman jury. He told them he paid Jennifer Smith $40 for a sexual
encounter that involved bondage. He explained that when he got out of
the truck to urinate, after having bound Jennifer's hands and feet with
shoelaces, the prostitute slipped out of her bindings and took a knife
from the glove box. When he got back inside the truck, "that's when she
attacked me."Rogers said that Jennifer, while still
nude, held the knife to his throat and ordered him not to move and to
give her his wallet. "Do it or die," he said Jennifer told him. He
refused and fought back. Fearing for his life, he said he knocked her
arm away and wrestled her for the knife, which he eventually obtained."I
got a hold of it and used the knife on her...I was just going back and
forth in virtually any direction I could," testified Rogers, explaining
how Jennifer received so many cuts. She eventually jumped from the
truck, and he chased her across the parking lot. He eventually grabbed
her, he said, and she fell to the pavement."Both of
our feet entangled," he said. "She went down backward, and I fell down
on top of her. On the way down, that's when I stabbed her in the upper
area here," he testified, indicating the right side of his chest, near
the shoulder."No one wants Dayton Leroy Rogers
released," Knauss had said only minutes before the jury left the
courtroom to decide his client's fate. "I don't want him released. You
don't want him released. I question whether Mr. Rogers even wants
himself released. What is needed is permanent isolation of this man. In
his fantasyland, he's become the sexual monster you've heard about from
these girls. He's developed and nurtured these feelings into a ritual.
It's a pattern you can't ignore. He's a sick man."But
do we kill him? Do we have a death sentence for people who are as sick
and depraved as this?" continued Knauss. "Look at the evidence. After
the killing of Miss Smith, he goes back to work and thinks about going
out to a coffee shop. The state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt
that he's a sick man." But, argued Knauss, he doesn't deserve a death
sentence.Four hours later, the twelve jurors
returned and announced that they had unanimously voted that the murder
of Jenny Smith was deliberate. They also unanimously voted that Jennys
murder was an unreasonable response to any provocation from the victim.
However, after one juror adamantly opposed the death penalty, all twelve
agreed that Rogers would not pose a continuing threat to society
because he would be imprisoned for life. Judge Gilroy immediately
sentenced Dayton to life in prison.Detective John
Turner and his colleagues were devastated by the sentence. The jurors
apparently thought that a life sentence meant that Dayton would never be
released, but they had been wrong. Under a life sentence he would be
eligible for parole someday, even if it was twenty or thirty years down
the road. They had inadvertently given Dayton Leroy Rogers yet another
chance to escape his just punishment, another chance to slip through the
cracks of the system.

The Second Trial

With the Molalla forest case looming in the
future, the prosecution had another chance to get a death sentence for
Dayton. It was the good guys' ace in the hole, and they would play it.
For the next two months, Turner and his colleagues worked closely with
the D.A.s office and presented the worst serial murder case in Oregon's
history to a grand jury. On May 4, 1988, Dayton was indicted on several
charges of aggravated murder under various theories of law for the
deaths of Reatha Gyles, Lisa Mock, Noni Cervantes, Cynthia DeVore,
Christine Adams, and Maureen Hodges. He was not charged in the death of
the unidentified victim, although the investigators were certain that he
had murdered her, too. As before, Dayton pleaded innocent. This time
around Christopher E. Burris, not Arthur Knauss, was hired to represent
him.Turner and his fellow detectives spent the next
eight months rounding up additional witnesses to interview, as well as
reinterviewing many of the others. They carefully went over the
evidence, and they put their case books in order. By the time the trial
began, they knew the case frontward and backward.Jury
selection, which began on February 6, 1989, took nearly two months to
complete. Ironically, considering the types of crimes Dayton was being
charged with committing, an all-woman panel of twelve was seated, with
an additional female as an alternate.When the trial
finally opened on March 30, 1989, this time in the courtroom of
Clackamas County Circuit Judge Raymond R. Bagley Jr., Eglitis outlined
his case for the jurors, contending that a knife identical to the one
that was used to kill Jenny Smith was found near the Molalla forest
victims' bodies. He described the torture, the grisly details of victims
having their feet sawed or cut from their bodies, and how one, Noni
Cervantes, had been eviscerated from a machete having been inserted in
the area of her vagina and subsequently sliced up the middle to the
sternum. By the time Eglitis was finished with his presentation of what
the jury would be considering, there was little left for the
imagination.For the next five weeks, the jury heard
horrifying testimony from many of the women whom Dayton Leroy Rogers had
violated and tortured at one time or another but who had miraculously
survived. Each explained in graphic detail, often tearfully, the
atrocities that Dayton had committed against them.One
former prostitute testified about her fifth and final date with Dayton,
an encounter that lasted in excess of six hours after he picked her up
on Southeast 82nd Avenue and drove her to the Molalla forest."He
got out of the truck," she testified, "and went over to the side where
you could see over the forest. He said how beautiful it was. I went back
to the truck and started to get undressed. He came up behind me and
started to put the bondage devices on. When I told him they were too
tight, that they were cutting into my wrists, he said that's what he
wanted to do."He started biting on my breasts," she
continued. "He was biting and tearing. I told him to please stop.
'That's too rough! This isn't right!' I cried and I begged for him to
stop. And the more I pleaded and begged, the worse the abuse got. When I
screamed too loudly, he became concerned and put something up against
my neck, which I assumed was a knife. He told me to be quiet, or else
I'd really have something to cry about. I didn't say anything, and I
tried to stifle the sobs as much as I could.""Did you say anything to the defendant?" asked Eglitis.No."What were you doing then?""Just existing."One
of Daytons relatives also testified, telling the jurors how he helped
Dayton establish his business and then closed it down after Dayton's
arrest. He told of how he found all of the suspicious items in the wood
stove inside Dayton's shop, including items that appeared to be the
metal inner portions of shoes. He burst into tears twice during his
testimony and diverted his eyes away from Dayton most of the time he was
on the witness stand.In tears and in tones that
were barely audible, Floria Adams, the fifteen-year-old daughter of
victim Christine Adams, testified that decorative studs, star-shaped
grommets that were found in Dayton's wood stove, came from her mother's
pants. Sobbing, she told the jurors that she recognized the studs.Bob
Thompson, the Oregon State Police criminologist who worked closely on
the case, explained how he had found pieces of colored glass in Lisa
Mock's hair and how, although he hadn't been able to determine their
source, they were similar to glass parts found inside Dayton's wood
stove. He also testified that hairs found inside Dayton's pickup were
macroscopically and microscopically similar to head hairs he compared
from the remains of Lisa Mock, Noni Cervantes, and Cynthia DeVore."This
man," said Eglitis in his closing argument, pointing at Dayton, this
man is obsessed, totally consumed in a sexual way with a woman's feet
and dominance. What is the ultimate act of dominance? It is to remove
that foot. We submit that is what happened in the Molalla forest."Eglitis
also reminded the jurors about all of the orange juice containers and
miniature liquor bottles found at the Molalla forest crime scene,
insisting that they made up a part of Rogers"signature.""If
there is a signature to a crime, under those circumstances you can look
at the signature," said Eglitis, "and see the identity of the killer.
This evidence is the mark of Zorro. It's the signature. The defendant,
ladies of the jury, not only committed these murders, but he might as
well have written his name on the victims' corpses."As
in the Jenny Smith case, there had been little doubt at the trial's
outset that Dayton would be convicted of the Molalla forest murders,
which is precisely what happened on May 4. After barely six hours of
deliberation, the jury found Dayton guilty of aggravated murder on all
counts. For the first time in public, Dayton, dressed in a conservative
dark-blue suit, displayed emotion by covering his head with his hands.
Shaking his head, he could be heard saying "No" repeatedly.Only
the question of his sentence remained. Much of the testimony the jury
would hear to decide his fate centered on Dayton's character, his
worthiness to remain alive, and psychological arguments about his past
violence.James B. Hupy, a vocational instructor at
the Oregon State Correctional Institution, explained how he had taught
Dayton the skills he needed to become a mechanic when Dayton was in
prison for the 1976 attack on the two Keizer, Oregon high school girls
he had picked up when the girls skipped school. Dayton learned fast,
said Hupy. In barely two years he went from being a person with little
or no mechanical skills to someone with high skills. Hupy said he
selected Dayton to be his apprentice a few months before Dayton was due
to be released from prison.James E. Miller, another
vocational instructor at the prison, testified that he knew Dayton
before he was arrested for the 1976 offenses. The two of them, he said,
played table tennis together at Seventh-Day Adventist social gatherings.
Miller explained that he was surprised when he ran into Dayton in
prison, but despite his offenses, he was determined to help him. In
fact, Dayton helped organize Adventist church services at the prison,
which attracted about a dozen inmates. Dayton always played guitar at
the services and seemed sincere in his religious convictions.When
the psychological testimony was presented, psychologist James R. Adams
explained that Dayton committed violent acts only under particular
circumstances, such as when he was intoxicated and sexually aroused in a
scenario that included bondage and foot fetishism. For him to become
violent he also must possess a feeling that he had been cheated, either
emotionally or sexually, and he must always have a helpless woman as his
victim. He also needed to maintain a reasonable certainty that he
wouldn't be caught for his crimes, and his victim must be someone he can
dehumanize, such as a prostitute. Adams's contention was that Dayton
needed all of these factors present for him to become violent. In
prison, said Adams, those factors would not be available to him, and he
would not be a threat to men.On the other hand, said
John B. Cochran, senior forensics psychologist at the Oregon State
Hospital, Dayton would in fact pose a continuing threat even in prison.
Cochran detailed a homosexual relationship that Dayton had been engaged
in and contended that, without availability of women as victims, it
would only be a matter of time before he began selecting male victims.Cochran,
who has studied many serial killers over the course of his career and
has served as a consultant to the Green River Task Force, explained that
the very act of murder can be very pleasurable for sexually sadistic
serial killers such as Dayton."If you compare it with normal, everyday sexual experiences," he said, "there just is no comparison."Cochran
elaborated by explaining that most serial killers fantasize about
murder so frequently that killing becomes second nature to them. Some
even develop a sexual bond to the murder weapon they use.In
arguing that Dayton's life be spared, Christopher Burris said that his
client was a sick man who should be locked away forever, not put to
death. He cited Dayton's good prison record, that he was a model
prisoner who helped establish church services and had experienced no
conflicts with other inmates. Burris suggested that the murders and
other crimes Dayton committed were not carried out in a deliberate state
of mind.Eglitis, on the other hand, characterized
Dayton as a walking time bomb. He said it was only a matter of time
before he began his pattern of deceit all over again. He described
Dayton as clever, one who was capable not only of luring and then
deceiving his victims but of deceiving and manipulating the
psychologists who had examined him. He had done it time and time again
and would continue in the same pattern if given the opportunity."He
can in every respect," said Eglitis, addressing the jury in his bid for
the death penalty, "including his appearance, walk among you without
giving any indication of the horrors that are within him. Dayton Leroy
Rogers is a walking time bomb. He is an act of criminal violence looking
for a place to happen. He's capable of fooling psychologists. He's
capable of fooling psychiatrists. I hope to God he's not capable of
fooling you."On Wednesday, June 7, 1989, after more
than seventeen hours of grueling deliberation, the jury voted
unanimously that Dayton had murdered his victims deliberately and
without reasonable, if any, provocation, and that he would be a
continuing threat to society whether behind prison walls or on the
outside. Judge Bagley sentenced Dayton Leroy Rogers to death by lethal
injection."It was righteous justice," said Turner,
solemn-faced but obviously pleased after hearing the verdict and
sentence. "Righteous in the sense that an all-female jury convicted him
and decided his fate."

Aftermath

Although John Turner, his colleagues, and Andy
Eglitis couldn't have been happier with the outcome, they knew that the
bizarre case of Dayton Leroy Rogers was not over. It would never be over
in their lifetimes, even if Dayton's appointment with the executioner's
needle was, in fact, ever carried out. Dayton had left behind too many
deaths, too many scars, too many shattered lives, not only among his own
family but, especially, among the families of his countless victims,
whether dead or alive, for his rampage to be quickly forgotten.Aside
from testifying at his first trial, Dayton Leroy Rogers has not spoken
to authorities since invoking his rights against self-incrimination
shortly after his arrest for the murder of Jenny Smith, and again when
Detective Machado tried to question him about the Molalla forest
murders. He has shown no remorse for his crimes. The Oregon Supreme
Court upheld his convictions, but his sentence of death was overturned
by the Oregon Supreme Court in the spring of 2000 for the second time.
Dayton will at some point, likely in the year 2001, go back to court for
yet another sentencing phase. If he is resentenced to death, he will
die by lethal injection. Otherwise, he will be sentenced to life in
prison with no possibility of parole, an option now available due to the
enactment of recent legislation. For now, Dayton sits in a single cell
on Death Row at Oregon State Penitentiary. He is allowed twenty minutes
out of every twenty-four hours to shower, shave, and exercise.Many
of Dayton Leroy Rogers's surviving victims have started new lives,
working to overcome drug habits and become productive citizens. A few
have died as a direct result of their life-styles, and others are still
working the streets.Molalla Victim #6 is still unidentified, and there are no new leads to her identity.One
burning question remains in the case of Dayton Leroy Rogers: How many
other bodies, victims of Dayton's blood lust, are still lying in
Oregon's forests awaiting discovery? Unfortunately, unless Dayton
decides to talk, that question may never be answered.